Homes

A modern take on the 1950s

Heather has designed a sleek, black and white interior for the kitchen.

Photograph by: Helga Loverseed
, Montreal Gazette

In 2000, when Notre-Dame-de-Grace residents Josh and Heather Miller went looking for a place to accommodate their growing family (Heather was pregnant with their son at the time), they first thought they would move to the West Island, where Heather's parents lived. That idea soon proved impractical. Josh, a chartered accountant and partner in a downtown firm, pointed out that to avoid the rush-hour traffic, he'd likely have to leave for work at around 6 a.m. and not get home until late in the evening.

The couple had been living near Decarie Blvd. but they decided to look further west, where prices were a bit lower than around Monkland Village. They ended up with a nondescript semi-detached 1953 house, which, from the outside, looked much like its neighbours, but there was a park across the street and a nearby school. (The Millers have a daughter as well as a son.)

"The house was at the opposite end of N.D.G. from where we were living before, but this is a good area for families," Heather explained. "The interior was dated -- nothing had been done to it since the 1970s -- but it was surprisingly roomy, and I could see it had potential."

The two-storey home (plus a basement) has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a powder room, an open living/ dining area separated by an archway at each end, which leads to a family room (a priority for the couple), that in turn leads to an ultra-modern kitchen. Off the family room, there's a wooden deck surrounded by a modest garden.

The 1950s house went through a number of renovations before the Millers got it the way they wanted it. Their first step was to reconfigure the second-floor bedrooms and upgrade the galley-style kitchen. (The upstairs bathroom was modernized a couple years later. That renovation was forced upon them when they came back from vacation to find that they'd suffered extensive water damage from burst pipes.)

"The kitchen dated back to the 1960s and next to it was a bathroom with a shower," Josh said. "We took that out, updated the cabinets and turned the kitchen into an L-shaped area with an 'eat-in' corner where the family could have meals together."

Heather, who has an eye for colour and design, drew up the plans herself, both for the initial renovations and the ones that followed (though the couple had to employ a draughtsman to create official documents in order to get planning permission). The "really big" overhaul came in 2012, when Heather and Josh decided to give the ground floor a complete makeover.

"We set ourselves a budget of $125,000," Josh said, "and that had to include everything -- materials, labour, new furniture. ... We also wanted to renovate the kitchen again. After a decade, we realized that it wasn't a very practical work area."

"You have to live in a space for a while before problems emerge," Heather explained. "I would make drawings to see if we could tweak the design of the kitchen here and there. Move a wall. Whatever. Once we had a plan that didn't change for a year, then we knew we could move forward."

After deciding on their budget, the Millers sourced a couple contractors to see which one would come up with the best deal. The goal was to gut the first floor and open it up, to create a modern, airy space that was elegant and family-oriented at the same time.

"The first fellow came in with one sheet of paper and said, 'This is the amount,' " Josh recalled. "The second guy came in with half a dozen sheets and detailed every single item, but his quote was 60 per cent higher than the first one. In the end, we decided to choose him and we're really glad we did. Apart from little fluctuations up and down, the final price was the one that he'd walked in with."

The contractor duly set about stripping everything "right down to the studs." Following Heather's designs, he replaced the windows in the family room, installing what is virtually a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass with a sliding patio door at the kitchen end.

The floor of the family room had "ghastly" green and black ceramic tiles, so the contractor matched the wood from the living/dining room in order to create a continuous flow throughout the ground floor, including in the kitchen and the hallway.

Heather, who says she's "all about storage" (meaning she likes uncluttered, flat surfaces), has designed a sleek, black and white interior for the kitchen. It boasts charcoal cabinets with stainless steel handles and countertops covered with grey and white veined granite. (The cabinets from the previous kitchen renovation were cannibalized to create storage space in the basement laundry room, which was also modernized in the midst of the ground floor makeover.)

There are two sinks -- a large "working" sink and a smaller "bar" sink. The backsplashes that surround them, the kitchen windows and the black glass top stove, are putty coloured ceramic. The fridge and other appliances are stainless steel. A shocking pink orchid perched on the half-wall between the family room and the kitchen, adds a splash of colour.

Burnt orange from paintings and a retro-style armchair provides a dramatic counterpoint to the neutral shades -- greige, beige and pale caramel -- that predominate in the living/dining area. The ceiling friezes, baseboards and archways are sparkling white. The tapestry chairs around the dining table are covered in butterscotch upholstery with an olive green floral design.

At the opposite end from the dining table and chairs stands a black leather couch in front of which is a coffee table with ZX-shaped steel legs and a glass top. Two side lamps with ivory shades echo its design, though according to the Millers, they were bought in different stores.

"We picked up quite a lot of things in Maison Corbeil and at JC Perreault," Josh said, "but some of our furniture is custom-made. We have a friend -- Peter Bailey -- who happens to be a carpenter. We would take pictures of pieces we liked -- for example our display shelves -- and he would come up with similar designs. He also built the cabinets in the kitchen."

The Millers are very happy with their elegant family home, but they are not quite finished with their renovations. They would like to build another bedroom upstairs -- probably on top of the garage -- and at some point, renovate the basement, but those are challenges for the future.

"The basement is probably going to be our next project," Heather said. "Once the kids have grown up and stop kicking balls against the walls, we'll tackle that!"

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